Responses to Vito Perrone

By Manuel N. Gómez and Charles S. Serns

by Manuel N. Gómez

The world seems mad in preoccupation with what is specific,
particular, disconnected."
(John Dewey, Democracy and Education,
1916)

Those of us committed to collaboration between higher education and K 12
schools continue to search out pathways for creating long- term
partnerships among our educational institutions. Vito Perrone's
Collaboration in Historical Perspective is a valuable contribution
to our movement which suggests fundamental unchanging attributes of
successful collaboratives. My comments focus on two significant issues:
(a) the similarities between Perrone's historical examples and our work
in California; and (b) the changes in educational institutions that are
essential to sustaining and expanding the collaboratives movement and
realizing its benefits.

In 1983, the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and Santa Ana Unified
School District formally entered into an academic partnership known as
the Student/Teacher Educational Partnership (Project STEP). During this
period the Santa Ana school district, the largest in Orange County, had
changed dramatically in its demographic composition, and the question of
how to improve the college/university preparation of its student body had
become one of shared critical concern. In 1985, our partnership expanded
to include Rancho Santiago College, CSU Fullerton, and Chapman
University.

From its inception, STEP was designed as a collaborative that corresponds
to many of Perrone's descriptors, including mutuality of exchange,
creation of an equal partnership in the struggle for high quality
educational programs, empowerment of those in the schools, and a shared
determination to develop the kinds of collaboration that would be most
useful. These are indeed the characteristics that have been most evident
in successful academic partnerships.

To share our experience with others, we wrote To Advance Learning: A
Handbook on Developing K-12 Postsecondary Partnerships (Manuel N.
Gómez, et. al., University Press of America, 1990). The dimensions
of successful collaboratives we found to be paramount parallel those
cited by Perrone. The starting point is the dimension of leadership: top
level leaders of UCI, the Santa Ana school district, and our other
partners were and have continued to be committed to genuine
collaboration. There was clear recognition that we were dealing with two
different cultures and that we had to overcome not only institutional
barriers but also the profound differences in organizational cultures
between the university and the K-12 schools.

As in the historical cases of John D. Pierce at the University of
Michigan, John Dewey at the University of Chicago and the Bank Street
teachers described by Perrone, the leaders within both educational
institutions were highly committed to "school/college collaborations that
. . . had a quality of reciprocity that made for equality . . .
[and in which] . . . The agendas, the purposes, and the conditions
were mutually derived." (Perrone, On Common Ground, Summer 1994,
p. 7) Perrone's historical examples also describe the quality of
collaboration that has characterized Project STEP­the reciprocity of
authority, the emergence of teachers who became enormously articulate
about education matters, and the binding together of those within and
outside of classrooms for a common purpose.

In To Advance Learning: A Handbook on Developing K-12 Postsecondary
Partnerships, we identify operational features of successful
collaboratives necessary or the realization of the shared vision of
mutuality. The methods needed to cross institutional boundaries in order
to create co-equal working relationships among K-12 and postsecondary
institutions, and to achieve mutual goals, are complex. Strategic
development of the following dimensions is especially important:
organizational structures; interinstitutional teams; fiscal and human
resources; meaningful participation; objective evaluation; continuous
communication; and ongoing leadership and momentum. While Perrone's
analysis was not aimed at identifying operational features of historical
cases, this is a separate analysis well worth undertaking.

Perrone describes, in the last section of his paper, some of the changes
in institutions of higher education that are needed to sustain
collaboratives. As Perrone notes, "universities must accept a broader
than usual view of scholarship, . . . value conversations and inquiry
related to teaching and learning, understand the importance of
interdisciplinary [and, I add, interinstitutional] collaboration,
understand the necessity of long term involvements, and affirm mutuality,
a parity of authority." (Perrone, p. 9) In Project STEP, we continue to
grapple with these fundamental parameters.

We are not there yet, and I doubt whether any institution of higher
education can achieve and sustain the changes in institutional culture
that are needed to maintain ongoing substantive cooperation for a
significant period of time without changes on a national level that
relate to collaboration. New institutional structures and faculty
motivation for involvement in collaborative efforts are currently ad hoc
on the campuses where they do exist. Across the nation, it is not
commonly an expectation that colleges and universities will have a top
institutional leader responsible for K- 12 school collaboration, as there
are individuals responsible for academic programs, research, student
services, and the like. I believe that we must invent a new permanent
structure within colleges and universities that helps further motivate
and advance ongoing cooperation between universities and schools.

However, institutional structures for guiding and sustaining long- term
collaboration with K-12 schools are only part of the equation. Faculty
recognition and rewards must also be changed to include this dimension.
A different type of research must, as Perrone notes, be recognized for
its legitimacy and excellence. Research deriving from collaborative
projects will often lead to different products, such as improved school
practices, new instructional methods, and higher-level curricula. These
can be documented and evaluated, as scholarly papers have been for so
many years, but the commitment must exist to invent new procedures

What are the benefits of K-12 school/college and university
collaboration, and do they justify significant departures in the
structures and norms of postsecondary institutions? The answer is "yes"
on at least two counts. Experience of successful collaboratives has
shown significant increases in the preparation of secondary students for
higher education. In Project STEP, the numbers of students from Santa
Ana attending postsecondary institutions have increased from 40% to more
than 57% in a six-year period, and the success and retention rates of
these students have been unusually high.

The fundamental question that we should be asking as we consider
collaboration with K-12 schools pertains to what we believe should be the
roles and responsibilities of our institutions of higher education, and
how our society should be investing and providing more, not less,
critical support to our teachers and young people. If higher education
is to remain vital, we must respond to the problems of our society, and
as the experience of cooperative agricultural extension programs has
demonstrated, the greatest contributions of universities to society's
problems require mutuality and collaboration. The current educational
partnership movement enables colleges and universities to make profound
contributions to our nation's schools, teachers, students, families and
communities. The institutional sructures, values, and incentives of our
educational institutions must change to make this important
responsibility a reality.

by Charles S. Serns

Collaboration as a whole, and university-K12 collaboration in particular,
is something that does not seem to have high value in our society.
While the politically correct rhetoric talks exhaustively about
learning about each other, little seems to be being done about
working with each other either as people or as institutions. As
we increasingly divide ourselves into sides or groups, it seems as if we
do not have the tools to join together for the common good. Part of
this inability may stem from the fact that children are seldom allowed to
truly collaborate in school settings and they are often not in
environments where they see effective collaboration taking place among
adults. Children are exposed to a series of educational settings in
which few adults can articulate the big picture of the learning process.
Certainly, if collaboration was an actual cultural norm, time would be
allocated for people to collaborate as a valued process and the
collaborative process itself would be respected.

Vito Perrone's excellent perspective on university-school collaboration
cites several examples of learned communities setting up collaborations.
The collaborations, with only a few exceptions, have not been embedded in
the culture of education. The widespread lack of collaborative
endeavors among elementary schools and universities highlights the
condition of elementary education as being seen as out of the loop of a
collaborative dialogue about teaching and learning in its formative
stages.

Granted these observations are generalizations, but if one truly wants to
develop collaborative models in schools, there are some big questions
that remain unanswered. Perrone's article serves as a springboard for
these questions:

Why is there a lack of "mutuality" among learning institutions? It
seems as if we are programmed to accept that these bodies should never
mingle. It is a waste­of time, of money and of the potential for a
common understanding about teaching and learning.

Why are the conversations about teaching and learning limited to the
college of education and random meetings of teachers? It would seem that
every university would want to engage in examining how people learn.
People do not learn best at any one particular age. However, they do
learn differently at different ages; a fact that, because we are divided,
is not well utilized.

Why is it the notions of equality and partnership in education often do
not include the learner as teacher and the teacher as learner? It seems
that the value of such inquiry is lost in issues of turf, control, and
self serving regulation.

Why is it that those who regale public school educators have such disdain
for the very people who are charged with shaping the nature and scope of
inquiry in students? The universities that see no need for high quality
teacher preparation programs with high academic rigor seem to doom
themselves and our future.

Finally, why do both universities and schools thwart the things that
Perrone points out, such as interdisciplinary collaboration, parity of
authority, mutuality, and articulated dialogue regarding teaching and
learning? It seems as if the answer serves as an unwitting partner in
those things that continually divide us.

While these questions may pose a bleak setting, there are answers.
Answers are found in the very best elementary school classrooms which
provide micro learning communities. Teachers facilitate learning
experiences that integrate skills and content and connect practice an
experience. Collaboration is done in a mutually supportive environment
which expects continuous learning. Many lessons can be learned from
this model.

Clearly, by Perrone's description and from a cultural imperative, we need
to find ways to collaborate. This collaboration must be part of our
essence as educators. To do less relegates us to small mindedness,
fearfulness and loneliness. When we refuse to collaborate, we fail to
empower one another and we fail to celebrate the strength of our
diversity.